I'm glad someone was there for you!

Sue- I'm glad and sad for you I am more glad that zuzu had the recipe for making you feel better!

Cindi - We've all had those kinds of days. Promise. It *does* get better, and looks like things were on the upswing for you!

Sue - I tried for 3 years to get hired on with one of our LGS, never heard back from them. Guess I'm not good enough to work there They'd rather have the 17 year old girls who don't know the difference between a petunia & a dandelion work there I guess. That's who they always end up hiring for weekend/evening staff.

I tried to work a couple of times at local nurseries. One told me they only prefer people with degrees in Botany (really???) and the other I met with the owner asked me a couple of questions when I turned in the application...then never contacted me. When I went back a couple of weeks later, there were some clueless people wandering around 'helping' customers. Every time I ask if they've gotten certain type of plant in recently, I get either a blank stare or a look of utter confusion. *sigh* I gave up.

I do a little online work for a nutritional company, maybe 4 hrs a month. I used to work 15-20 hrs. a week for them but they slowed down and the manager took on a lot of the admin. work I was doing. I still would love to find something like that again, online work with flexible hrs. Need a bit of supplementing our retirement income for my shopping therapy!
In the meantime, I continue my online ATP database *work* (fun)!

Cindi,

Thanks so much for sharing your story - very uplifting. We could all benefit from a little good karma coming our way now and then, when we least expect it!

Cindi, I'm sorry to hear that your week started so badly, and am glad to hear that they are getting better. What a wonderful story about a random act of kindness and how it can turn the tide!

Cindi, that's a wonderful story. Renews the faith in humanity, doesn't it?

Wow. Proof positive that there ARE some decent people left out there !
WHY is it that women always feel better when they go SHOPPING ???

Working in nurseries IS fun, but the pay usually sucks. Been there, done that ! The other issue with it is that you want to buy all the new good things that come in...

Zu: I'd take that ugly oak tree over palm trees any day.

I agree. Palm trees are useless!

At the beach, they're fine...otherwise they're just an annoyance.

I just planted my last three tomato plants outside, I have no more room in ground, the rest of my 49 tomatoes are in ground but these three are in this crazy looking patio grow bag container. Sort of container. More like a sack LOL! The hardest part was stuffing the darn thing with potting soil.

What on earth do you do with all the tomatoes from 49 plants ??? LOL

Eat them! Give them to neighbors and friends. I did get sorta carried away this year but then that would not be unusual for me!

Mike - Can them? Roast them, freeze them, make sauce out of them... my parents always plant waaaaaaay too many mater plants & then complain that they have 20 bushels of maters to deal with! My first year up in NY, I went fishing & caught 3 nice sized bass. I fileted them & kept the scales/fins/guts & put them in a bucket w/water. Let this rot in the sun for about 2 days. OMG the stench! Was enough to make a buzzard barf. however, I dumped the water onto my mom's new tomato garden and within about 2 months the maters were the size of cantaloupes (no joke!). One mater I weighed came to almost 5 pounds!!

I don't know how many tomato plants I'll be planting this year, but it'll be a lot. I have about 120 in the cold frames at the moment but I give a lot away. I've canned many quarts, so my favorite thing to do with them every year is to dry them. They take up a lot less space once dried and dried tomatoes are so good on so many things. We might have grilled cheese and dried tomato sandwiches for lunch or an Orach and dried tomato salad. Or dried tomato, garlic, ham and zucchini quiche for dinner.

Darn, now I'm hungry.

Tabby - reading that made me hungry too! And I'm a diet! Celery & hummus for me.. yay... How do you dry your tomatoes? My parents have tried a couple of times, but they just end up molding.

tabby, I am getting hungry also reading your delicious ideas for tomatoes. I have never tried drying, I think you need a machine. I never can either but I do cook them down and freeze in portion sizes so that I can then use the sauce to make spagetti sauce or in chilli. But mainly I just eat them. Eat tomato and cucumber salad, eat tomato sandwiches and just eat a tomato like you would eat an apple or peach. Yumm, I love home grown tomatoes!

Planted one red pepper plant and a cell pack of italian parsley today. Put in Snow peas and Green Arrow regular peas, started my pole bean seeds today. I have marketmore and salad bush cucumber seedlings which I still have to plant.

Then in my new tomato garden area I added some other veggies. I planted lettuce seedlings at the ends and then running along the middle between the two rows of tomatoes I planted celery and brocoli rabe alternating. Then I plan to put radish seeds along the outside long way. I have dill and chive seeds also, just have to figgure out were to plant them.

I dry my tomatoes using a dehydrator we've had for about 25 years. It works well. I use it for a lot of things such as apples and peppers. Once the tomatoes are pretty dry I put them in freezer bags and freeze them since I don't use any preservatives. They might be ok without the freezing, but I freeze them just in case. I have a big upright freezer so there's plenty of room.

Dried tomatoes are good all by themselves. I often sneak a bunch of tomato "chips" while making salads. And cherry tomatoes make really sweet tomato chips.

I never dried rose petals in the dehydrator, but those are easy to dry just by laying them out on a paper towel.

I went with some black heirloom tomato varieties this year. I have Black Cherry, Chocolate Stripes, and Cherokee Purple. I also have one called Haley's, and sweet cherry tomato, and another Heirloom that I can't remember (Justin? it's a name) plus a yellow and a green pepper, tomatilloes, and a few herbs. I have one pathetic looking cucumber...not sure why I bother. Stupid cutworms.